Book Girl and the Captive Fool (18 page)

For now, Akutagawa’s voice was steady, too.

When Tohko turned and sent her hair fluttering, the packed seats of the audience were filled with gasps of appreciation.

That was how pretty, how beautiful without hyperbole Tohko looked with her hair down, her entire bearing redolent of a book girl from an older, purer age. She was like a violet blossom announcing the advent of spring.

“Where are you going?”

“To my flower lessons.”

The always-pumped hyperactivity she had when she played Nojima was ratcheted down to a nice level in her performance as Sugiko. The way she recited her lines and her movements as she dipped her head at Nojima were both simple and pretty.

I watched Sugiko walk away gracefully the way Nojima would have, thinking,
Ah, this is the most beautiful flower nature has made.

A being that is gentle, noble, dreamlike.

“Precious, precious girl. I will be a man worthy of becoming your husband. Until I am, I beg you not to marry another.”

I knew what it felt like to pray so hard for something.

To be happy just looking at the person you love for your heart to leap, to tirelessly imagine things turning out well for yourself, and to love a person ceaselessly to the point of foolishness.

My feelings for Miu mingled with Nojima’s feelings for Sugiko.

Other people might consider it nothing more than a stupid fantasy or deluded misconception.

Maybe I hadn’t understood Miu’s feelings.

But there was nothing false in my love for her.

Facing Sugiko at the Ping-Pong table, gripping the paddle tightly, we shot balls back and forth.

There was a smile of enjoyment on the face of the girl he loved. Each time she swung the paddle, the long sleeves of her kimono fluttered like butterflies’ wings.

I was sure Nojima would have wished for this moment to go on forever.

“Where else would I find a woman so innocent, beautiful, and pure, so considerate, and so lovely? God is offering this woman to me. How cruel He would be otherwise.”

“Where does this happiness come from? Is this illusion? It is much too rich for that.”

“I cannot but love her; I cannot lose her. I will not be denied. God, have pity on me. Grant us our happiness.”

But despite how much Nojima loved her, Sugiko loved his best friend Omiya.

Omiya had always been aware of the feelings Sugiko had for him. So he always treated her coolly. Ironically, that only attracted Sugiko to him even more.

“Why don’t I stand in for Nojima?”

Omiya faced Sugiko across the Ping-Pong table. As he acted out Omiya pelting Sugiko with merciless shots, Akutagawa’s expression was tense and forbidding. The conflict Omiya was feeling came through with almost painful clarity.

It was Akutagawa’s own conflict and his own suffering, as well.

After the incident six years earlier, he had vowed to be always honorable and intelligent.

After he started high school, he must have felt so conflicted when Igarashi asked him to introduce him to Sarashina and when Sarashina told him she wanted to break up with Igarashi. He must have agonized over his decisions.

It must have tortured Akutagawa that he couldn’t return Sarashina’s feelings, though he felt how strong they were, and his guilt toward Igarashi must have wrenched his heart.

He had hidden those feelings for an entire year beneath a placid exterior, and never letting slip any complaint, he would only open up to his mother, who slumbered at the hospital, through the letters he wrote to her.

I didn’t want to deny his awkwardness, his almost obstinate honor.

No matter how foolish it might be, no matter how mistaken.

You chose that path after careful consideration.

The story was approaching its climax.

Omiya was going abroad in order to sever his attachment to Sugiko.

“I pray for your happiness,” he said with a quiet smile to Nojima, who had come to see him off.

Sugiko watched Omiya as he said that, tears springing to her eyes.

Our emotions mingling—

With Nojima’s, with Omiya’s, with Sugiko’s—

Until I see myself in the people living inside the story as I read it.

Until I rejoice alongside them, laugh alongside them, feel sad, suffer, shout, and cry as I turn the pages.

Nojima proposes to Sugiko, but she turns him down.

Pressing the plaster mask of Beethoven that Omiya has sent
from overseas to my face, I crouched in the center of the stage and sobbed out Nojima’s feelings.

Heartbreak is truly an awful thing.

I didn’t know how I was supposed to overcome this unbearable pain that dashed my hopes in an instant, that covered the world in darkness, that cut my heart to shreds.

God—why did you take away the only thing that mattered to me?

Miu—I still haven’t forgotten you. Every time I think of you, my breath catches, and I feel my chest tearing apart. Why did you refuse me and go so far away?!

Darkness fell over the stage, and Omiya stood at stage left, his face filled with anguish. A dim light illuminated him.

“Dear, honored friend. I owe you an apology. You will understand everything if you look at the story that appears in a certain literary magazine. I will not compel you to read it. It is my confession. And I ask you to judge us.”

A spotlight fell over me as I huddled in the center of the stage. I looked down at a handmade magazine and flipped through the pages avidly.

Sugiko appeared at stage right and turned a tormented gaze toward Omiya, who stood at stage left.

Then lit by faint spotlights, Omiya and Sugiko began to alternately read the letters published in the magazine.

“Please don’t be angry, Mister Omiya. It took all of my courage to write to you.”

Tohko’s clear voice spoke ardently of Sugiko’s passion for Omiya.

In contrast, Omiya stubbornly refused her and begged her to accept his best friend Nojima.

“You are still unaware of the good in Nojima. I hope you will recognize his soul.”

“Please, Mister Omiya, I want you to see me as an independent human being, as a woman. I want you to forget about Mister Nojima. I am the only one here.”

“You are idealizing me. Even presuming that you came to be with me, it would not make you happy.”

“You are a liar. Truly a liar.”

The tense exchange continued.

Tohko’s voice was colored by passion, her cheeks burning scarlet and her eyes filling with fiery tears as the lights shone on her.

In contrast, Akutagawa’s expression slowly grew darker and firmer.

“I don’t know how I should reply to you. I am at a loss. I wish I could talk to Nojima. But I lack the necessary courage. I feel so bad for him.”

With each word he spoke, Akutagawa furrowed his brow in pain. His tightly balled fists were trembling.

Akutagawa’s suffering pierced my heart.

The commandment he imposed on himself to be honorable, the terror of making a decision.

The events of the past had hog-tied him and pinned him down mercilessly.

Please don’t give up. Cast off your commandment.

You’re not a bad person.

You were honorable.

I want you to find a way to move on.

“I wondered whether to send this letter or if I had better not. I think it would be better not to. However—”

He stopped.

Akutagawa’s face contorted, he opened his eyes wide and stared out at the audience as if he’d just suffered a terrible shock.

In the third row from the front, right in the middle, sat Mayuri Sarashina with bandages wrapped around her neck.

I gasped, too.

She was looking up at Akutagawa with agony in her face.

Akutagawa stiffened, his slightly open lips trembling. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and cradled his head in both hands, breathing in short gasps.

He looked exactly the way I did when I was having an attack.

The entire auditorium fell silent.

If he’d been unable to say his line so far, then there was no way Akutagawa could say it now, especially with Sarashina in front of him.

I wanted to run to him, but here onstage it was impossible. Just as I felt my chest constricting, a clear voice rang forth.

“Mister Omiya, will you let me tell you my story?”

Sugiko—no, Tohko had moved out to the center of the stage.

What are you doing, Tohko?!

The spotlight chased after her, appearing to be panicked at her unplanned movement.

“This story contains a very important ‘truth’ that will help you in your decision. Please hear me out, and don’t plug your ears against me.”

In the very center of the brilliant light, her long black hair swishing, her eyes glinting like stars, Tohko began to tell her tale.

“The main character is a boy who is polite and noble, an honor student skilled as both a scholar and an athlete.

“There are two other characters. Both are in the same school year as the boy. One is a serious girl with long hair, of a similar type to the boy. The other is a girl with short hair and cold eyes who we would have to call unfriendly.

“Both of them loved the boy.”

Akutagawa raised his head and looked at Tohko in surprise.

Sarashina’s eyes widened, too, and her face grew troubled.

Did the audience think this was part of the play? They stared transfixed at the stage, drawn in by Tohko’s voice and movements, despite how dubious they looked.

On the other hand, I too was watching Tohko from onstage.

How would the book girl analyze Akutagawa’s story, which was filled with hurt and lamentation?

Would Tohko be able to draw Omiya’s line out of him?

“At the start of the second term, sparked by the fact that their seats were next to each other, the boy became friends with the long-haired girl. The long-haired girl didn’t get along with her mother, and she was upset. The boy listened to her troubles and gave her his sister’s old books and otherwise cheered her up.

“The short-haired girl watched the two of them bitterly, always from a slight distance. So the boy mistakenly thought that the short-haired girl hated him.

“But in fact, though the short-haired girl liked the boy more than she could bear, the long-haired girl and the boy seemed like the perfect honor student couple. She couldn’t stand idly by.”

The audience was hanging on her story, which seemed to have no connection whatsoever to the main plot.

The auditorium was as silent as a forest at night, Tohko’s clear voice the only sound flowing into it.

“There was something the short-haired girl wanted. A rabbit doll. This rabbit was a love charm, and she had been told that if she had it, the boy she liked would return her feelings. The short-haired girl probably lingered outside the store festooned with these rabbits and begged her mother for one. And finally she got one.

“Maybe now the boy would notice her. The short-haired girl was ineffably happy. But the long-haired girl had the same rabbit doll.

“What’s more, it had been a gift from the boy.

“The short-haired girl was so horribly aggrieved, so horribly sad, that she shoved the long-haired girl into a pond.”

It was obvious that the main character was supposed to be Akutagawa, the long-haired girl was supposed to be Kanomata, and the short-haired girl was supposed to be Sarashina.

Partway through the story, Sarashina clasped her hands tightly together in her lap and bent her head in pain.

Tohko’s story continued.

“But the long-haired girl, his best friend, is not the one the boy cares for; rather, he cares for the short-haired girl.”

Sarashina’s eyes shot up toward the stage.

I gaped, too.

The boy liked the short-haired girl? But that would mean that in elementary school, Akutagawa had liked Sarashina!

Akutagawa stared at Tohko, wide-eyed. I couldn’t tell if his expression was one of confirmation or denial.

Tohko smiled.

“Do you not believe me, Mister Omiya? Do you laugh my story off as the fantasy of a book girl? I am not telling it absent of proof, you know.

“What you should pay attention to here is the rabbit doll.

“The boy confessed to another friend that it was a birthday gift. He was too shy to go by himself to a store frequented by girls, so he went to buy it with the long-haired girl and had her choose it.

“That by itself would make you think that he gave the rabbit doll to the long-haired girl for her birthday, no?

“But that makes no sense,” Tohko declared, turning her majestic gaze on the audience. The audience had grown even quieter, and everyone was holding their breath, waiting for Tohko’s next words.

Sarashina may as well have turned to stone.

“At this point, I’ll give you a hint. The name of the long-haired girl was Emi, meaning ‘smile.’ Her father had given her this name because when she was born ‘the mountains smiled.’

“Mister Omiya, if you have any knowledge of poetry, you should know what ‘the mountains smiling’ refers to. It is a seasonal allusion to spring when plants have begun to bud and the mountains appear lightly splashed with color. Which means that the long-haired girl was born in the spring. The long-haired girl grew close with the boy after summer vacation. He gave her the rabbit doll near the end of autumn. Long before her birthday.

“So then why did the boy tell his friend that it was a birthday gift?

“Did the boy lie?

“No. Can we not imagine that the rabbit was originally meant to be a birthday gift for someone else? The boy was embarrassed to go to the store alone, so he had the long-haired girl
come with him to select a gift for someone else.

“And the short-haired girl’s birthday was in the autumn, and moreover she had wanted that rabbit for a long time.”

Astonishment showed on Sarashina’s face as she stared at the stage.

And on Akutagawa’s face, too.

Dressed in her fluttering sleeves and billowing pants, Tohko built her story up with a breezy rhythm.

The oppressive, torturous story was gradually tinged a lighter, gentler color.

“No, Mister Omiya? You always treated me coldly, but for that very reason, I became obsessed with you. Each time you were curt with me, I became sad and was even more captivated by you.